


In this age of grand illusion you walked into my life

by EllaStorm



Series: The meaning in between [2]
Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death of Glitter, M/M, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 02:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6355954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaStorm/pseuds/EllaStorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the Death of Glitter, a ghost shows up in Curt's dressing room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In this age of grand illusion you walked into my life

**Author's Note:**

> This is either an AU-ish follow-up to "Keep your 'lectric eye on me, babe", or an out-of-the-blue standalone - you decide. It might be a little too angsty to be full blown Curt/Brian fix-it-fic, but it's definitely going there.
> 
> The title is (how else could it be?) courtesy of David Bowie, owner of my heart & soul, from his song "Word on a Wing".

“Let’s be real: Glam rock started rotting from the inside the moment it went on stage. I’m not going to say that it wasn’t alluring, that it wasn’t fantastic, and groundbreaking, and all that – because it clearly was – but only as long as its perfume could mask the smell of decomposition. _It was just a phase,_ that’s what they’re saying, right? Like every fucking thing on this fucking planet is just a phase. Fame. Youth. Love. As soon as it’s there, the clock starts ticking, _tick-tock-tick-tock_ , and you never know how long you’ll have it, until it slams the door in your face. Most people don’t care. Some think about it for a while, then take the path of willing ignorance. The rest take drugs.

 

 _“But what does it mean? What does it all add up to?_ Well, fuck if I know. Maybe, for someone somewhere out there it all makes sense. The only thing _I’ve_ ever been certain of is that, since everything is doomed to die, you better throw a party while you’re at it, and go out with a big fucking bang.

 

“And that’s why, back in the day, we dragged glam to its grave, before it reached the final stage of its natural decay. We’d never been big fans of _natural_ , anyway. Or _decay_.

 

“Setting things on fire and throwing glitter on them, though? That was more like it.”

 

 

\- Curt Wild, 1979 -

 

 

***

 

Curt doesn’t remember when exactly he spotted him. At some point during his performance the lights went flashing all over the crowd, he saw the shady figure with the hat in the doorway, and he just _knew._

Even after – well, after whatever – there was still something _happening_ , knowing that _he_ was in the room. As if, for this dying sigh of glam, the whole magnetic resonance between them had decided to make a final reappearance, and from one moment to the next Curt stopped performing, and started getting forcibly pulled through the song towards its inevitable conclusion, the last guitar riff, the ultimate precipice, at breakneck speed, completely horrified and completely struck, like the first time and all the following times he’d ever been on stage with Brian.

 

When he looked up at the end of the song, the doorway was empty.

 

***

 

On the way back to his dressing room Curt was starting to get desperate for a fix. Alcohol, crack, sex, it didn’t really matter, just _something_ to take his mind off the inevitability of death, off Brian, off the phantom of hands down the back of his leather pants and of lips on his guitar strings.

 

He’d seen a few fans in the crowd, and some of them had caught his eye, particularly one kid, dressed up like Brian with blue hair and sparkling, honest eyes.

 

Maybe, if…

 

His train of thought stopped, crashed and burned as he entered his dressing room, because there, right there, staring into the mirror with glassy eyes, washed-out blue hair and a face pale as chalk, sat a ghost.

 

The door fell shut behind Curt, as he stared into the reflections in the mirror, Brian and him, over and over and over, before it got too much, too fucking much; and the next thing he knew, he was smashing his fist against the wall beside him with enough force to tear skin.

 

Brian kept looking at him, not turning around, not saying a word.

 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Curt finally managed. He could feel drops of blood forming at the little cuts in his knuckles.

 

“I came to see you.” The expression on Brian’s face didn’t change, and Curt remembered, oh, he remembered, the sheer frustration he used to feel at trying to decipher this face. But he wasn’t going to do that again. As of today, glitter was officially dead. So was Brian Slade.

 

“Great. You’ve seen me. Is that it?”

 

Finally, Brian turned around, and all of a sudden, there was emotion on his face.

 

“No. I wanted to – I don’t… I can’t tell when or how, but Maxwell Demon, he became-“ He didn’t finish the sentence.

 

“Overwhelming? Schizoid?”, Curt said. It sounded less cold than he would have liked it to.

 

“Yes. Yes.” Brian got up from the chair. “All that entourage, and the press, and the people, so many _people,_ Curt. And it was horrifyingly easy to be cruel. To anyone.”

 

“No, Brian, I don’t think it was cruelty. You were being too indifferent for cruelty.” Curt really didn’t mean to say it, to put it into words, but his composure was slipping, making space for the long-covered bitterness still itching under his skin, and the words came out.

 

Brian smiled, sadly, and stepped closer. “I was never, _never_ indifferent to you. Not even when we-“

 

He broke off. That sentence didn’t need finishing.

 

“When you walked out that bloody door, and drove off, I just – I lost it, Curt. I lost every last part of whatever I was. I called Jerry, you know, I told him I couldn’t finish the tour, that it was all just too much. I had – I HAVE no idea what I’m supposed to be doing, what the _point_ is, because with you, with you there was always a point, to everything, every song, every note, every fucking breath. Whatever we were doing, it was never – meaningless. Like everything I’ve made ever since. Everything I’ve _been_ ever since.”

 

Brian had become visibly upset during his monologue, all frantic hands and anger-pain-sadness wet in his eyes, and Curt couldn’t help but feel that this was one of the times he really got to see Brian, the man, and not Brian, the image _,_ as he fell apart before him, scared and hurt and just so fucking _human_.

 

“We have it, and we lose it, don’t we?”, Curt said, softly. “It comes, it goes, it dies, just like we do. There’s no meaning but the one we put into it.”

 

“I know. Fuck. Who else knows better than me?”

 

The silence stretched between them, years, maybe.

 

Centuries.

 

“We’ve changed”, Curt finally stated. “We’re not the same.”

 

Brian nodded and his eyelashes fluttered as he looked down. He was still beautiful, even though the cocaine had left shadowed traces of gauntness on his cheeks, and his hair was too long.

 

“Do you hate me?”, he asked, and Curt could tell that it was hard on Brian, being so straightforward without a mask to protect him, but still, this seemed to be the question he had been working towards the whole time.

 

If anything, he deserved an honest answer.

 

“I did.” Curt said. “For a while.”

 

“Fair enough. Hatred is better than indifference.”

 

Curt laughed, joylessly. “I can’t be indifferent, Brian. I wish I could. I’d probably take less drugs, if I could. But I can’t. You of all people should know that.”

 

“I do know. I saw you tonight.” Brian looked up at him, eyes shrewd and alert, a sudden shift from the sadness in his expression, and there it was, again, that _pull_ Curt had felt on stage earlier, only stronger this time, like he was being dragged into the orbit of a planet.

 

“When you were on that stage”, Brian continued, “it was like an epiphany. For a few minutes, it all made sense. You don’t perform, Curt, you _feel_. That’s something I could never do. I can never just _feel-_ ”

 

“Yeah, you can”, Curt intercepted. “You could.”

 

“Because you _made_ me.” Brian’s expression was open, raw, and Curt didn’t even do anything, his body was simply following the laws of gravity, when he grabbed Brian and pushed him up against the wall, teeth against his bottom lip, nipping away, while his hand started blindly tearing at Brian’s shirt buttons, until he sent them flying across the floor.

 

Brian was pulling at his hair, and a moan escaped his throat, as Curt opened his mouth in a wet, brutal slide against his, like he was trying to devour him alive, before a hand landed on his ass and pulled him in, pressing him against Brian from chest to hip, hot and achingly hard in his pants.

 

“I need-” Brian panted, grinding their hips together, when Curt left his mouth for a few seconds to rip off his shirt. “Patience”, Curt interrupted him, his left hand wandering over Brian’s throat, pressing down on the rabbit-fast pulse of the artery there, as his right busied itself with opening Brian’s jeans. As soon as he’d managed to pull down the zipper, though, Curt found himself forcefully shoved back and pushed toward the old couch in the corner, Brian stripping their pants off in the process with swift motions. In a matter of seconds Curt was naked and sitting down, with Brian on his knees before him, an unabashedly indecent expression gleaming in his eyes.

 

“I’m not a patient man”, he said, and bowed his head.

 

“Shit.” Curt couldn’t help the curse spilling out of his mouth as Brian’s lips engulfed him in wet heat, making his nerve endings buzz and his head swim. His hands grabbed for purchase and found hair, deep blue nails embedded in bright turquoise, while he tried his hardest not to push Brian down, only half-succeeding, feeling the muscles at the nape of Brian's neck twitch under his fingertips. Just when he sensed the first precursors of his orgasm tingling at the base of his spine, Brian pulled off with an obscene sound and a wicked smile around his dark, used lips.

 

Curt dragged him up by his shoulders and kissed him, tasting himself in his mouth and biting at his bottom lip, hard. “One second”, he murmured, before he got up and rushed toward the dressing table, third drawer, make-up-removal stuff, a forlorn eyeliner, and, there, – vaseline.

 

When he turned back, plastic jar in his hand, Brian had laid himself down on the couch, back up, one arm bowed and supporting his weight, the other outstretched to the floor in a close to perfect re-enactment of the _Maxwell Demon_ album cover; and Curt stared for a few moments, before his instincts took over, and he leaped at Brian like a predator, biting into the pale flesh of his back and leaving angry red behind, as he manhandled him into a half-kneeling position, fumbled open the vaseline and went to work with his fingers.

 

Brian got loud around the second finger in, deep breaths and desperate groans tumbling over his lips, and Curt decided that this would do. With a final twist of his fingers and a kiss to Brian’s sacrum, he rose up and buried his forehead at the nape of Brian’s neck.

 

Then, slowly, he let himself sink inside, piece by piece, until he was settled as deep as he would get.

 

“What do you feel?”, Curt whispered into Brian’s ear, at last.

 

“ _Everything_.” Brian’s voice was hoarse.

 

Curt kissed the side of his neck, softly. “See”, he murmured. And then, because he couldn’t help himself: “I fucking missed you.”

 

He felt Brian shudder beneath him, as he started setting up a rhythm, his head buried against Brian’s shoulder, pushing and pulling towards their mutual precipice, the smell of Brian’s skin surrounding him like a blanket, until his vision went white at the edges, and he felt like flying, except it was more like falling, a permanent destination before him, _ivory and gold,_ he thought _._

Then he was gone.


End file.
